"I cannot! I'm too ignorant."
"Then what will you—shall you—do?"
"Just stay—on watch."
She stood a moment more, comforted to be on watch with him and thinking sadly of all there was to be on watch for. Then she heard Julian softly call her name. Without looking his way she started back for Mrs. Gilmore and the gold hunter, but the brother overtook her.
"Ramsey." She faced him. "Ramsey"—his tone was thin—"when you were talking just now with that pusillanimous whelp, and neither of you looking at the other, did he say anything of a confidential nature?"
His scrutiny read confirmation in her fearless eyes. When she would have spoken her utterance failed and, unable to do anything else half so well, she laughed.
"You can still do that!" His hint was of Basile.
"A little," she tinkled again, though her eyes ran full.
"Ramsey, did he—over there—just now—that reptile—say anything—tender?"
She flared rose-red, gazed down ashore, dropped her voice to a key he had never heard, and said, wondering why she said it: "Mr. Courteney is a gentleman."